Unification Minister Lee In-young on Monday stressed the need for talks with North Korea on the regime’s demand that the South drop its “double standards” as a condition of progress on inter-Korean relations. During a parliamentary audit session, Lee responded to a question on whether Seoul could accept Pyongyang’s call for an end to what it called “double standards” -- meaning the way the South...

North Korea may resume long-range ballistic missile tests next year, the US Defense Intelligence Agency said, warning that the regime is unlikely to renounce its weapons of mass destruction as it believes they are critical to the country’s survival. The DIA, which provides intelligence to the Defense Department, released a report Friday examining Pyongyang’s military program, strategy and int...

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday expressed “deep regret” over Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s sending of a ritual offering to the Yasukuni war shrine, which is seen by its Asian neighbors as a symbol of Japan’s wartime aggression. Kishida sent a “masakaki” tree offering under his name as prime minister to celebrate the shrine’s two-day fall festival that runs through Monday, acco...

South Korea and the US are almost ready in their preparation to provide humanitarian assistance to North Korea, Seoul’s top nuclear envoy said Saturday, amid the allies’ efforts to revive stalled diplomacy with the recalcitrant regime. Noh Kyu-duk, the special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, made the remark upon arriving in Washington for talks with his US and ...

A rare exhibition is taking place in the country’s eastern coastal city of Gangneung, Gangwon Province. More than 120 exquisite celadon ceramics from the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), known locally as cheongja, are on display at “Celadon, the Microscopic World of Goryeo.” Renowned for its subtle and elegant beauty, various shapes and sizes of celadon ceramics, which get their name from their mysti...

Former Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha’s bid for the post of director general of the International Labor Organization is being met with criticism from labor groups, while the government backs the bid that could see the first woman and first Asian leader in the organization’s 103-year history. The election is slated for March. If Kang gets the job, her term would start next October, when current ...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to build a powerful military to strengthen war deterrence, but insisted that the country’s main enemy is “war itself,” and not South Korea or the US. Kim made the remarks Monday as he gave a rare speech at a defense development exhibition to mark the previous day’s 76th founding anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party, the North’s official Korea Cent...

Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that his government would strongly urge South Korea to take appropriate action to resolve the strained bilateral relations between the two countries, signaling that he will likely maintain the same hard-line stance toward Seoul as his predecessor Yoshihide Suga. In his first policy speech since taking office Monday, Kishida briefly mentioned S...

The COVID-19 medical supplies sent by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies have reached the North Korean port of Nampo, an apparent signal that the reclusive regime is easing its strict border lockdown and welcoming outside help. A few months ago, the WHO and other UN agencies were informed by North Korea’s Public Health Ministry that it would allow items stranded in China since t...

North Korea has been advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities over the past decades, and time is running out to prevent the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear state, experts said Thursday. Pointing out that past South Korean and US administrations had failed to dismantle the regime’s nuclear program, experts attending a Korea Institute for National Unification seminar called for ...

South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong stressed the need to declare an official end to the Korean War in his talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, amid recent signs of potential discrepancies between Seoul and Washington in their approaches to Pyongyang. The two envoys held a pull-aside meeting Tuesday on the margins of a meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation a...

North Korea has continued its nuclear and ballistic missile programs this year, despite international sanctions and a dire economic situation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a UN report on Tuesday. A panel of experts monitoring sanctions on Pyongyang, in a report sent to the UN Security Council, said the North “continued to seek material and technology for these programs ov...

Communication between South Korea and the North was restored Monday about two months after Pyongyang unilaterally cut off contact in August, raising cautious hopes of an inter-Korean rapprochement. Liaison officials from both Koreas held two phone calls via a cross-border channel on Monday, one at 9 a.m. and one at 5 p.m., the Unification Ministry said, after previous calls from the South wen...

Communication channels between South Korea and the North were restored Monday about two months after the North unilaterally cut off the hotlines in August in protest over the joint military drills between Seoul and Washington. The Unification Ministry confirmed that liaison officials from the two Koreas held a phone call via a cross-border channel at 9 a.m. on Monday -- a call that had gone unan...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held out an olive branch to South Korea, saying he was willing to reopen the severed inter-Korean hotlines in October, while denouncing the US offer of dialogue without it changing its “hostile policy” toward the regime, the North’s state media said Thursday. Speaking on the second day of a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s ...